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Taxes at the Top

July 8, 2012 1:07 pmJuly 8, 2012 1:07 pm

It looks as if Mitt Romney’s personal finances are going to be back in the news. One thing we’ll be hearing from his defenders is the argument that he doesn’t really pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, because you should count the taxes paid by the corporations in which he invests.

But my guess is that conservatives really shouldn’t want to go there. Because if we do, we realize that tax cuts are a much bigger story in rising inequality than the right wants to hear.

Piketty and Saez (pdf) have looked at tax rates including imputed corporate taxes, and here’s what they get:

Tax rates for the super-elite, the top .01%, have fallen in half since Mitt Romney’s father ran for president; or to put it differently, after tax income for this group has doubled due to policy alone. And bear in mind that the US economy flourished just fine under those 60-70 tax rates …